Yesterday Gawker Media denied reports that their database of 1.5 Million usernames, emails and passwords had been hacked. Comments broadcast via the apparently compromised Twitter feed of Gawker Media’s tech and gadget site Gizmodo strongly suggested a security compromise. Mediaite can now confirm that the Gawker’s database has been compromised at least to some degree. Evidence delivered from an anonymous source claiming responsibility for the security breach, also claims that a complete sharing of the private user data will be shared later today at 9PM GMT (4pm EST.) Update #2 – Data has been shared and Gawker’s CMS as been hacked as well.

After months of taunting over various extensive 4chan campaigns, someone purporting to be a member of internet “hacktivist” collective Anonymous now appears to be claiming it has hacked into Gawker Media and stolen 1.5 million usernames, emails, and passwords. Update – Gawker Editorial Director Scott Kidder says via Twitter “No evidence to suggest any Gawker user accounts were compromised, and passwords encrypted anyway.”

We’ve got another story to go in the “always check your sources” file. The Sensacionalista, a Brazilian satirical news site (think a low-scale Onion written in Portuguese), posted a story last week about an American woman who claimed she was impregnated by a 3D porn film. The quirky joke was soon being reported all over the internet asfact. Soon enough, the well-respected tech site Gizmodo took the bait as well!

Brian J. Hogan, welcome to the national spotlight! Wired magazine’s blog “Threat Level” has now identified the individual who found/stole the next generation iPhone and sold it to Gizmodo, sparking a rather large dust-up between Gawker Media and Apple.

The spat between Gizmodo and Apple over Gizmodo’s mysterious acquisition of an iPhone 4G months before its release has proven to be an endlessly engrossing spectacle for the techies out there. Well, last night, Gizmodo got a very high-profile and consumer friendly supporter: Jon Stewart

Well, this gives the lie to the theory that Gizmodo’s bombshell article about the leaked iPhone 4G a. was an Apple plant and b. would have no legal repercussions. Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who authored the piece and took apart the iPhone, had his house raided by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, who he says seized four of his computers and two servers, made him stand outside of his own house with his hands on his head, and tried to dredge up the source of the leaked iPhone.

Wow. If we are to believe this story to be true (and, honestly, why wouldn’t we?) a prototype for the new Apple iPhone was found lost in a bar in Redwood City. Engadget had the first pictures this weekend, but now Gizmodo has a lovely video walk-through that will get any iPhone user excited about an upgrade. One can only wonder, hope pray that somehow the new iPhone will also come with less dropped calls?

The end is nigh! Again. But will it be the end of free content across the board, or will it be the end of the NYT dominance on the web? We shall see. Over the weekend it was once again reported the NYT may be charging soon. Here’s a look at the reactions.

“You get what you pay for” has become a truism of free online content of widely varying quality. But in a Twitter klatsch, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, Editorialiste Andrew Nusca, and AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka examine the otherside of the equation: publishers with fewer resources are forced to lean on the reporting of others to a greater degree. Then again, as Lam points out, even in the pre-link era, there were plenty of ‘real’ journalists who rereported others’ work without attribution: